1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in delivering machine pre-sorted route ready mail by separating a stack of mail into individual common address batches such that the postal worker is only presented with the mail for each separate delivery address at the time of delivery to that address and does not have to find the separation points between the various addresses in the stack.
2. Description of the Known Art
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, mail sorting devices are known in various forms. Currently D.P.S., also known as Distribution Point Sequence, mail is sorted by a bar-code which is provided by the mailer or applied by the postal system. The bar-code contains information about each address which enables the post office to use automated sorting machines to sequence the individual pieces of mail into route order for each delivery route. While this mail has been sorted by automated machines, when it gets to the delivery carrier, it is still presented in one large stack and then has to be manually sorted through and separated and examined by the carrier before delivery to each address. This process, when done manually, is known as “fingering” the mail. This invention is directed to providing a machine for this manual process. This is desirable because many carriers so abhor having to finger the pre-sorted mail while delivering their route in their vehicle that they resort to casing this mail in the office into their sorting cases. Casing the mail is when you bundle it into individual groups with rubber bands around each separate group. While this lessens the burden of having to sort through two different bundles of mail on the route, cased mail and pre-sorted mail, it wastes time for the carrier to re-sort mail which is already sorted by route order. Also, the delivery carriers who do take their pre-sorted D.P.S. mail to the street sometimes resort to fingering this mail as they drive, taking their attention away from the task at hand, driving safely. Having a machine machine do this preparation to ready the mail stack into individual address bundles for delivery to each address would add productivity and reduce the amount of time each carrier spent out on the route, which would require less running time per delivery, which would in turn reduce fuel consumption of their delivery vehicle.